Jessica Mauboy to kick off Australia Day celebrations by singing the national anthem in Aboriginal languages

Jessica Mauboy will help to unfurl celebrations across Sydney on Australia Day by singing the national anthem in local Indigenous languages while perched on top of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

The breakfast-time performance by the 26-year-old Aboriginal star is part of the day's WugulOra ceremony, one element in a powerful display of First Nations tradition on a date that will forever be "complex" for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.

Uncle Max Eulo conducts a smoking ceremony during the official announcement of the Australia Day 2016 program. Photo: Steven Siewert

For the first time, smoking ceremonies - cleansing rituals that are millenniums old - will take place at seven points around the harbour in remembrance of the founding of New South Wales in 1788.

"January 26 is a complex date for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders," Clarence Slockee, Aboriginal educator at Barangaroo Delivery Authority, said at the launch of the 2016 Australia Day program on Wednesday.

"The date itself is an interesting conundrum, but the essence of the day for us is just to remember that we are still here ... that we do have the world's oldest living culture and that we contribute to what is the core and the essence of the land."

Aboriginal elder Uncle Max Eulo, who will lead one of the ceremonies, said the day is more about history than celebration.

Efforts of inclusion follow those of Sydney's New Year's Eve spectacle, when the City of Sydney's fireworks display began for the first time with a vast Welcome to Country ceremony projected onto the bridge's pylons.

Free concerts at the Sydney Opera House, the annual Ferrython, tug and yacht ballet, a cruising concert, a tall ships display, aerial shows by the Russian Roulettes and the Red Berets, a 10-kilometre wheelchair race, Carnivale – this year in Paramatta – and the 180th Australia Day Regatta are also planned for the day, which crescendos with a fireworks display in Darling Harbour.

For the second time, a "Salute to Australia" will take place at midday, when all Australians are invited to sing the national anthem, followed by a 21-gun salute from HMAS Adelaide and an RAAF flyover.